After torrents of bad news, President Barack
Obama got some relatively good news earlier this month, when contrary to most
expert predictions, the people of Iran elected as their new president, a cleric
considered a moderate by Iranian standards. Hassan Rouhani is a vast
improvement over the outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose economic and
foreign policies Rouhani himself has frequently criticized. Of course the real
power in Iran remains with the Supreme Spiritual Leader, the Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei. But the president, especially if he has strong public support, can be
influential.And as Iran and the United
States seem to be inexorably moving towards war over Iran’s nuclear aspirations
that could be significant.

Hassan Rouhani is 64. He
has a doctorate in Law from Glasgow Caledonia University in Scotland. In
addition to his native Persian he is said to be fluent in Arabic, English,
French, German and Russian. That could make him far more international in his
outlook, than most Iranian leaders.

Rouhani captured more than
50% of the vote, defeating five candidates considered more conservative, by
highlighting these objectives during the election campaign:

-Protect civil rights and try to get the release from detention of
political prisoners.

-Improve the economy and get international sanctions lifted.

-Get the international community to ”acknowledge the rights” of
Iran to have a nuclear program.

-Restore diplomatic ties with the United States.

Whether this makes Rouhani
a “true reformer,” ”a moderate” or a “pragmatist” is now being widely debated.
But it certainly seems that his victory is something of a defeat for hardliners
including those of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

I was taken by a phrase
Rouhani used in his first public appearance after the vote.While he expressed a desire to reduce
American-Iranian tensions, he described those tensions as “an old wound that
must be treated.”

That “old wound” is
actually a series of wounds that each side has inflicted upon the other going
back more than half a century. A few years ago, I fantasized a letter that President
George W. Bush might write to his Iranian counterpart. In re-reading it, it
occurred to me that such a letter from President Obama, might now be
appropriate. This letter too is fantasy- but the historical facts are real.

Dear President- elect
Rouhani,

I congratulate you on your
impressive election victory, which could represent an important change of
direction for both of our countries. You have spoken of your desire to see an
improvement in relations between us, but “an old wound that must be treated,”
could preclude that.

Perhaps one of the ways to
begin to heal that wound, would be to be perfectly frank about the things your
country has done that make Americans hostile toward Iran – and to
acknowledge some of the things my country has done over the years that might
make you feel the same way about us.

These are my major worries:

1.According
to the International Atomic Energy Agency (and my own spies) you are continuing
to reprocess uranium as fast as you can. You are enriching a large supply of
uranium to the 20% level which we both know is just a short step from weapons
grade. As this is the key ingredient in making nuclear bombs, I have to assume
that is your intention, and as I have stated publicly. we will not tolerate
this.

2.Concerning your increasing involvement in the
Syrian Civil War- I understand that President Bashar Assad is your long- time
ally.But sending your proxy into Syria
– the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah – is an escalation that could turn the
Syrian conflict into a full scale Shiite-Sunni sectarian war. Let me assure
you, the United States has absolutely no desire to see such a war- but if there
is one, you can expect we will do what’s necessary to protect our interests and
allies.

3.Americans
have not forgiven Iran for its support of Shiite militias in Iraq, whose
roadside bombs killed and maimed thousands of American troops serving there.

4.We still
hold Iran responsible for the 1983 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans. A lot of my people also won’t forgive
Iran for holding those fifty-two American diplomats hostage back in 1979.

These are previous American actions or policies which I concede
could cause the Iranian people to harbor resentments against us:

1.My
country did interfere in Iran’s internal affairs by helping engineer the coup
in 1953 that overthrew your elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossedegh and
installed the Shah. It wasn’t all about oil, although his nationalizing the
Anglo-American Oil Company was a factor. But amidst the Cold War, we were
mainly worried about Mossedegh’s links to the pro- Soviet Tudeh Party and fears
he might take Iran into the Soviet orbit.

2. The United States did tilt toward Saddam Hussein during the
1980-88 Iran-Iraq war- a war that may have cost a million lives. We gave
battlefield intelligence with satellite photos to Iraq. And we provided
weapons, including the chemicals that were illegally used against Iranian
forces (and later Kurdish civilians.)

3. In Afghanistan in 2001-02 Iran did try to help us with the
overthrow of the Taliban and the containment of al-Qaeda, but that cooperation
was ended by the then neo-cons in the White House.

4. In July 1988, the U.S. Vincennes did shoot down one of your
airliners, killing 290 people including 66 children. The captain said it was an
accident but our own investigations found the captain to be a little trigger
happy.

There you have it. I have my reasons to mistrust your country -
and I appreciate that you would be equality suspicious of our intentions. It is
clear to me that we have good reason to talk seriously and to end this more
than 30 year blood- feud. God willing, we can.